The Spirit Wilds: Magic of the Green Sage (Fall of the Sages Book 1), стр. 48

I have to find them!

A beam was in her path. She ducked beneath it without breaking stride, and then she hopped over some rubble, tripped on a stone, and face-planted with a yelp in front of a body. She bit her tongue from the impact, and the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth.

Tuni cursed and spat out the blood, then looked up. She shouldn’t have. For she looked into the blank, dead eyes of her friend Rukshin.

A sharp cry escaped her. No! Blood stained his head all over and covered his lips and chin from where it had spilled from his mouth. She didn’t have to look any further to know that he was gone.

She flailed back onto her feet. Tears stung her eyes. This isn’t happening.

The demon roared again. Closer now. Every fiber of her body told her to run, but she would not. Her family was still out there. They lived on the edge of town, so it was possible that they had avoided this beast.

Tuni swiped the tears from her eyes and steeled herself. She ran. Sprinted. Arms pumping. The tears came again. The ground shook as the demon smashed something else. No time to think about that. Her beads, jewelry, and trinkets jingled much too loudly as she ran. Stealth wasn’t something she was accustomed to, but in this situation, she wished she could be more silent.

The square came upon her. The ground was cracked and broken from where the demon had stepped. The fountain was smashed to bits. A body floated face down in the green water around the base. She didn’t want to know who it was, but the blonde hair and thick build meant it wasn’t her family. There were other bodies thrown about, blood everywhere, nothing moving. Her eyes were too blurry with tears to tell who anyone was.

She kept on to the end of town where the road turned left onto a small dirt lane that her house sat at the end of. Rounding the corner at a sprint, almost toppling from her momentum, she saw the lane. The other houses were damaged, but not as destroyed as the rest of town. It gave her a brief glimmer of hope, the type that takes makes your heart swell before it is dashed against a stone and broken.

And that was what happened, because when her eyes finally settled on the end of the lane, she found the white plaster walls and reinforced mushroom cap roof of her home caved in and broken.

“No,” she said simply, out of breath. No, no, no!

Please no!

She had an out-of-body experience then. She didn’t really feel any physical sensations as her legs carried her the distance to her shattered home. The front lawn was churned to dirt. The low fence busted. The door was gone, exploded into splinters. Without hesitation, Tuni rushed through the doorway.

Telli was in the middle of the room, in a pool of blood, her body broken and almost unrecognizable.

Tuni screamed and fell to her knees. She crawled toward her little sister, her tears and sobs so strong that she could hardly breath. Snot ran into her mouth. Her whole body shook and hurt as everything inside of her filled with a cold emptiness.

Once she was at her sister’s side, she reached a shaky hand to her cheek, which was covered in blood. Her whole body was, as if she’d been crushed. Which was exactly what had happened. The demon did this.

She couldn’t breathe. Gasping, her chest pounded painfully. She backed away, trying to blink away tears but failing. This isn’t happening, she thought again and again. Sweet little Telli, so much life and joy, so full of knowledge, so many dreams, and now all extinguished.

It should have been me.

A groan cut through the silence, and through the deafening sorrow of her mind. Her heart skipped a beat. Mom.

Tuni left her sister behind and sprinted for their mother’s room. It was only steps away. The door was gone, and the roof was caved in here too. Furniture was crushed and broken, debris strewn about—glass and splinters and pieces of plaster.

Lying in the corner, a piece of a beam lodged in her gut, was her mother.

A panicked squeal escaped Tuni, the type an animal would make when it knew it was about to die. Because that was what this felt like. Her life was over. The life she’d known was gone, never to be the same again.

“Mom…” she wheezed.

Her mother was still alive, but only just. Her gray tunic was soaked with blood, now more black than gray. Blood pooled beneath her, and her gaze was woozy as she tried to stare at her daughter.

“Tu-Tuni?” she managed to say, though it was obvious that every little thing, even breathing, was an agonizing chore.

“I’m here, Mom,” Tuni said through tears as she collapsed at her mother’s side. “I’m here.” Her hands hovered over the wound, but the beam was all the way through and wider than her hands. It was a miracle her mother was even still alive, and gods only knew how much longer she had.

Somehow, her mother smiled weakly. “Thank…thank g-goodness you’re…you’re safe.”

Of course, the first thing her mother said was about Tuni’s safety. That just made her feel even worse.

She choked on a sob. “I should’ve been here. I shouldn’t have run away.”

Her mother shook her head, if only barely. “Shh, shh, d-don’t say that.”

“I’m so sorry, Mama,” Tuni croaked, each word hitching, each word a wheeze that made her chest ache.

“N-no, I’m s-sorry, my girl… I… I…was t-too hard on you.”

Tuni shook her head violently, barely able to see her mother through the tears. “No, you were just trying to protect me. I should have listened to you more, done what I was told.”

Her mother managed a warm smile, though even that simple act made her wince. “If— If you’d listened to me, y-y-you may have